The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Murder in the name of God

A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped was stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery by Islamic militants, a human rights group said.

Dozens of men stoned Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death Oct. 27 in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismayo, Amnesty International and Somali media reported, citing witnesses. The Islamic militia in charge of Kismayo had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her, the rights group said.

Initial local media reports said Duhulow was 23, but her father told Amnesty International she was 13. Some of the Somali journalists who first reported the killing later told Amnesty International that they had reported she was 23 based upon her physical appearance.

Calls to Somali government officials and the local administration in Kismayo rang unanswered Saturday.

"This child suffered a horrendous death at the behest of the armed opposition groups who currently control Kismayo," David Copeman, Amnesty International's Somalia campaigner, said in a statement Friday.

This outrage is beyond the understanding of any civilized person. If it were somehow possible to line up all those responsible (and all those who took part in the stoning) against a wall, and shoot them out of hand, I'm sorry to say that I wouldn't turn a hair. The blood of this murdered girl cries to Heaven for justice.

I'm sure many will blame Islam for this atrocity: but in reality, it has very little to do with Islam. This is the product of a male-dominated culture where chauvinism, insecurity and thuggery have ruled for untold generations. Islam has been 'inculturated' into this society, warped and twisted in ways that I'm sure were undreamed of by its original adherents. These murderers are in the same league as allegedly 'Christian' terrorists like the Provisional Irish Republican Army (predominantly Catholic) or the Ulster Volunteer Force (predominantly Protestant) in Northern Ireland, or Christian fundamentalists who preach racially-biased doctrines (for example, the Creativity Movement, formerly known as the World Church of the Creator, a White supremacist organization; or, in the Black community, the Trinity United Church of Christ, famous for Rev. Jeremiah Wright's call for God to damn America). Any sort of religious fanaticism, along nationalist, sectarian, racial, sexual or any other lines, in any system of belief, is equally dangerous.

I can't pray for God to damn the perpetrators of this murder to Hell, because as a matter of principle, I won't pray that way about anybody: but if He were to drop an Almighty great thunderbolt into their midst on the earliest possible occasion, I'd be very grateful.

I'm a bit puzzled by equating this tragic event with the verbal nonsense spewing from the Creativity Movement and the Trinity United Church of Christ. There is a large difference between hating other people and actually killing them.

While I agree that the world would be a better place if they were huddled around when the lightning bolt hit, I'm thinking it would be a lot better if we defended our own people and values strongly enough so that they realized that they had better change their ways before we decide to change them.

I've always had this weird urge to say what I think. As I've gotten older, I'm better at holding my tongue, but I have absolutely no doubt that had I been born in the same culture that Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was born to, I would not have survived to adulthood. You can say that would be a good or a bad thing, but I commented this morning here, and I have thought of that little girl all day long. What a cheat that a full half of a population is treated as chattel and has no voice, no rights, and ultimately-- no life. I every day am thankful I was born here, and not there. Heaven help the myriad woman who have been or will be executed in stadia while thousands of smug, grinning men look on without batting an eye.

All the discussion about Aisha's age is, quite simply, IRRELEVANT! It doesn't matter if she was 13 or 23 --- or 3 or 93! --- SHE WAS THE VICTIM OF RAPE. She most certainly did NOT "commit adultry": she was brutally attacked, first by three rapists, then by a crowd of self-rightous rock-throwing murderers.

And where, by the way, ARE those three rapists? Unfortunately, I'd have to guess they're free to rape again, and never got even a symbolic wrist-slap.